Dying Daily #353: In the Club

Are you in the club?

We all have our out-groups and in-groups. People who are in our club and people who aren’t.

People we automatically trust a little more than we trust others, people who get a free pass.

People we automatically distrust a little more, people who have to work a little harder to be in our more inner circles.

This makes the world easier to navigate. It also, like all shortcuts, causes us to miss huge parts of the trip and may cost us vital information along the way. All convenience has hidden problems woven into it.

At their heart, convenience and labels and categories are there to help us think less. To make decisions more quickly and with less deliberation. This is good in many ways. There is no way we can consider every possibility on every decision. I get that.

This is problematic when it comes to people, whether they are in our club or in another club. We make decisions before we have all the facts or even any of the facts. We make decisions before we even meet the person.

What happens when you aren’t in the club?

A lot of people never have to encounter this is any real way. If they look like the dominant club, think like the dominant club and believe what the dominant club believes, everything is fine for them. They don’t actually have to know they are in a club or that there is even a club to be in. For them, it is simply the way things are and everyone who isn’t in their club is weird or wrong or misled. Water to a fish.

This doesn’t mean that their club has all the answers or that there is nothing good in other clubs. It doesn’t mean they are right or best or most beautiful. It just means they are in the biggest club. The one with the most members, in their particular geographic region, in their particular time period. Someone somewhere else thinks their club is the best because it is the biggest.

What clubs are you in?

How do you view people who are in your club?

What about people in a club different from yours?

How quickly do you trust someone just because they profess to be in your club?

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“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” Nietzsche